• Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.

Ocean Revive T247 - Disappointed in Coral colors

EricBa

EricBa

I moved from Metal Halide/VHO to 3 - T247s over my 125 about 1 year ago. While I still have fairly good growth in all of my sps, the color in many of them is very disappointing. In some the color is fine, like pink lemonade, tri color, but others like blue tort, Garf Bonzai, Red Planet, Miami orchid are very faded. Most of the colors that have issues are very light, almost off white. I don't believe this is an issue of having too much light. I slowly adjusted the lighting over the first couple of months. Could this be a color spectrum issue.
Anyone have experience with this? Not sure what to do, considering going back to MH, but not looking forward to the heat and power useage.
Thanks for any help,
Eric
 
art13

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I thought i was giving off too much light with my reef breeders at 75% blue 35% white, had the issue you seem to be describing, i put a 8 bulb t5 over it now, much more light, and when i looked in the tank right after i installed it, i could tell immediately that my coral were not getting enough light. It might also have been a spectrum issue. Have you thought about adding a t5 retro to supplement them?
 
redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
+1 on burnt blues. Had a similar problem with my Apollo's that I documented HERE. I was wondering why I was loosing corals, and they weren't "popping," when my future son-in-law noticed the cooked blue LEDs. Easy to spot.....top of the LED is blackened. You can even see the blackened blues with the lights ON:

IMG_0943_zpszw8fjan5.jpg


And here they are removed:

IMG_1001_zps9arnq8tt.jpg
 
Lostinthedark

Lostinthedark

NJRC Member
I lost a bunch of corals due to Ocean Revive lights. Like Paul, I didn't notice the blues weren't working properly until my wife pointed out the tank looked "yellowish". With the help of ChrisGarrick we got them up and running but I am also considering going T5s. My SPS were never as vibrant as I thought they could be. Most of my Ricordia have also turned the same color orange after a while in the tank.
 
EricBa

EricBa

Thanks for all of the input.
kschweer, I read the link, then promptly inspected all 3 of my T247s. I don't believe I have this problem. All of my LEDs are clear with no signs of anything blackened.

art13, I'm not sure this is a "not enough light" issue. I'm leaning towards a possible spectrum issue, so I've been playing with the percentages of Ch1 (blue) and Chan2 (all others). I've been doing this very slowly meaning make a small change and let it sit for weeks and observe, make a larger change and repeat. I really haven't gotten much improvements.

redfishbluefish, I've been following your issues with the burnt LEDs. I noticed you put a link on one of the threads for the latest LEDs that you bought (I forget the name). Are you happy with the colors of the corals under this LED? I was thinking about buying one and replacing one of my T247's to see if it made a difference.

saltkreep88, changing to t5s certainly crossed my mind, but I don't want to give up on LED's yet. The power savings is a big plus.

Anybody have a positive experience with Ocean Revive and coral colors?
Thanks,
Eric
 
saltkreep88

saltkreep88

Paul's 450 nm leds are already in the OR lights. And about power savings... I am using 100 more a watts now but my 200 watt heater no longer turns on. And I will gladly pay 5 dollars more a month for happy corals.
 
jgraz

jgraz

I had the OR S026 leds. They are same as the T247 except the timers. I was running them for about a year before I gave up trying to get good colors out of them. Switch to T5 and colors of all corals have improved drastically. I did however keep one fixture running on my sons 45G cube. This cube has mostly SPS. As long as I was only running blues the colors were fine. As soon as I tried to get the whites going everything went downhill, no matter how slow I moved with them. There is a Vendor here who runs the OR LEDs also and has had the same issue as I experienced. IMO and the vendor's there is something going on in the white channel that is not quite right. I won't pretend to know what it is but whenever I used them colors went into the toilet. After I switched my DT to the T5 I used the OR LEDs on my frag tank and my sons tank. I quickly switched my frag tank to T5 and thanks to the above issue with the burnt out LEDs, I just yesterday switched my sons tank to T5 as well. I am now running 3 ATI sunpowers. 8x60w on my 180, 8x24w on my frag tank, and 6x24w on my sons tank. I could not be happier.
 
art13

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Just my opinion here, the cheap led's will work, with at best mixed results. some people will figure them out, some people like me will lose their mind trying to get the lighting right, when i switched to the t5's like jgraz did, i had the exact same results with how everything colored up and growth picked up. I've seen a few tanks run the leds you are using, one tank was very nice, i've also seen very nice tanks running reef breeder fixtures, just didn't work out for me. If i went back to led's, it would be AI hydra's or radions, possible kessil, but i wouldn't go back to the cheap stuff unless it was an lps tank.
 
EricBa

EricBa

Thanks for the reply's. I have been thinking about going to T5s, but before I give up on the T247s I was hoping to hear from someone who has had long term success with them. I've been on other sites and I've seen a few people have success with the colors of SPS, but I can't really tell if this was short/long term and its hard to get details. I'm going to try for a while longer. I'll post if I figure these things out.
Thanks,
Eric
 
Daniel

Daniel

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I Have been using 4 T247 over my 180 and now over my 210. I have had them for about two years now. I am getting great growth and color. I have SPS growing on the sand.
Have you tested your Magnesium? I like to run my Magnesium high over 1550 and this will help make the Colors pop in SPS.
My lights are 12" off the water.
Channel 1 at 85%
Channel 2 ay 50%
I have great coverage over my reef.
 
EricBa

EricBa

Daniel, I haven't checked my magnesium in a while. I just ordered a test kit and I'll see if that helps, thanks.

Ch 1 is the blues, Ch 2 is the whites.

Thanks,
Eric
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top